Accounting For Care

Anton Lewis, PhD

Within my recent book, Voices of Change: Race, Racism, and Colonization in Accounting, British academic Dr. Iwi Ugiagbe-Green gives an exceptionally moving account of what caring is, what caring can do, and why we all need to care for one another far more than we do. In her chapter, “The Cost that Comes with Not Caring: An Autoethnographic Critical Reflection of Race Equity in Education,” she reveals her personal, sometimes traumatic journey engaging in race equity work as a Black woman professor within the UK higher education landscape (A. Lewis, A. Saatkamp, and J. Sopt (Eds.), Voices of Change: Race, Racism and Colonization in Accounting, Emerald). Through trials and tribulations, Ugiagbe-Green expounds that everyone—irrespective of their history, class, color, or creed—should have the same academic experience of care and compassion. This maxim can be elucidated in a similar way in US accounting, calling for empathy and kindness to be foundational tenets of accounting life. What is “the Caring Accountant”? And why does the notion of care and accounting seem oxymoronic?